AMD Planning to Enter Solid State Drive Market

AMD is putting all it can into its Radeon line, as a new entry will join the video card and memory lines: solid state drives. These SSDs will carry the Radeon R7 branding, and come in 120, 240, and 480GB capacities on the SATA 6Gbps interface. Performance numbers are only known via leaks so far, yet it looks like read and write speeds on the 120GB drive are around 550MB/s and 470MB/s, respectively. The write speeds increase a little at higher capacities, up to 530MB/s, while read speeds remain the same. Max random read IOPS range from 85,000 to 100,000, while max random write IOPS are at 90,000 for all three drives. Each drive is evidently based on the OCZ Indilinx Barefoot 3 processor and runs Toshiba 19nm MLC NAND flash chips.

It looks like AMD is trying to do all it can to enter the SSD market properly, and if the price is right, things could be looking up for the company. A formal introduction of the Radeon R7 SSDs is supposedly planned for August 13, so keep it tuned here for the full scoop.